CONSCIOUSNESS

50 1. Philosophy
for Jackson to show that one must choose between physicalism and phenomenal realism, he
must show that there is a salient difference between how biological and phenomenological
properties relate to microphysics. And this, it seems, cannot be done. P7
19 Taking the Edge Off Type-A Materialism Brian Fiala
(Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ)
Type-A materialism is the view that consciousness can be explained exclusively by explaining
various functions. According to Chalmers, ‘’the most interesting arguments for type-
A materialism are those that argue that we can give a physical explanation of our beliefs
about consciousness, such as the belief that we are conscious, the belief that consciousness
is a further explanandum, and the belief that consciousness is nonphysical’’ (2002: 253). He
also claims that ‘’at a certain point, the debate between type-A materialists and their opponents
usually comes down to intuition: most centrally, the intuition that consciousness (in a
nonfunctionally defined sense) exists, or that there is something that needs to be explained
(over and above explaining the functions)’’ (253). Because anti-materialist intuitions are so
powerful, the result is that ‘’even among materialists, type-A materialists are a distinct minority’’
(253). The charge is essentially that type-A materialism presents itself as a radical view
because it does not take seriously that which appears to be intuitively undeniable about consciousness.
But, I claim, this shortcoming is not a necessary feature of the view. By explaining
key anti-materialist beliefs, a type-A materialist can produce positive arguments for the view
while simultaneously rendering it significantly less radical. For example, a type-A materialist
who offers a robust functional explanation of the intuition that consciousness is a ‘further explanandum’
takes that intuition quite seriously, even though such a materialist clearly does not
take the intuition at face value. Since this sort of materialist has in hand an adequate explanation
of one his opponent’s key intuitions, it would be unfair to accuse the materialist of simply
‘intuition mongering.’ I argue that an especially important group of beliefs about consciousness
includes those beliefs that are manifested in our intuitive judgments about consciousness,
particularly intuitive judgments that are leveraged in philosophical arguments about the nature
of consciousness. I suggest that the tools of cognitive science and experimental philosophy
provide a promising avenue for explaining these intuitive beliefs. I briefly sketch some ways
in which we might use these tools to functionally explain the intuition that consciousness is
not physically explicable. C2
20 Beauregard and the “New” Dualism: An Emergentist Response Mathew Gendle,
Jeffrey C. Pugh, Department of Religious Studies, Elon University
(Psychology, Elon University, Elon, NC)
In their book “The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul”
(2007), Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary outline arguments supporting non-materialist
neuroscience approaches to the understanding of spiritual experiences and consciousness.
This work dismisses the physicalist thinking championed by many mainstream scientists and
philosophers, and stokes the debate between materialism and dualism. Although the authors
present an excellent argument for why materialism cannot fully explain human consciousness
and many spiritual experiences, their work fails to make a convincing case that Cartesian
dualism possesses explanatory power beyond that provided by physicalism. By focusing on
the dichotomy between materialism and dualism, Beauregard and O’Leary have overlooked
a viable third alternative: emergence. As discussed by Clayton (2004) and Peterson (2006),
radical emergence provides more satisfying explanations for the range of mental and spiritual
phenomena studied by Beauregard and colleagues. Radical emergence is compatible with
both the claim that mental states arise from physical substrates and the position that mental
phenomena are not wholly reducible to embodied biological activity. In this presentation, we
will review the principle claims outlined in “The Spiritual Brain”, critique the authors’ nonmaterialist
position in regards to these claims, and re-examine these points through the lens
of radical emergence. P1